Wednesday, April 04, 2007

If the decision is made to stage an attack on Iran, responsibility will ultimately rest with the Great Decider in the White House. But the enablers for that decision will be in the Democratic Party, which ironically swept to victory in both houses of Congress in November 2006 due to popular disapproval of the conflict in Iraq. That war with Iran would have catastrophic consequences for the United States should be evident to everyone, particularly after the errors in judgment and execution that have produced today's Iraq and Afghanistan nightmares. That the buildup of forces in the Persian Gulf in and of itself could easily trigger a conflict, either by accident or by design, has also become clear, particularly in light of the seizure of 15 British marines and sailors on March 23. A slightly more trigger-happy response, which would have been likely if American rather than British troops had been involved, could easily have resulted in a shooting war.

Historically, the Democratic Party has been the party of war in the United States, having actively maneuvered to involve the U.S. in the First World War, Second World War, Korea, and Vietnam in spite of considerable popular support for isolationism or nonintervention, particularly among Republicans. That continues to be the case in spite of the White House's unfortunate adoption of the neoconservative formula for world domination, which is derived from the neocons' Trotskyite and Straussian roots rather than from any genuine, conservative Republican tradition. While the ever mutable Mitt Romney and other Republican presidential candidates are striking the obligatory hard-line poses in front of Israeli audiences and groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), most Republican congressmen do not see Iran as a front-burner issue and would be extremely reluctant to consider a military option. That is not necessarily true of the Democrats.

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Congress Owned by UnAmerican Foreign Interests

"Conservatives are accustomed to liberals not understanding the zoology of our movement. But the use and abuse of the term 'neoconservative' has exceeded even the high allowance for cliché and ignorance generally afforded to those who write or talk about conservatism from outside the conservative ant farm. In fact, neoconservative has become a Trojan Horse for vast arsenal of ideological attacks and insinuations. For some it means Jewish conservative. For others it means hawk. A few still think it means squishy conservative or ex-liberal. And a few don't even know what the word means, they just think it makes them sound knowledgeable when they use it."